


This Outward Seeming

by calathea



Category: All American Rejects
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it seems like every time he stops long enough to look in the mirror, he's someone new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Outward Seeming

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by inmyriadbits.

"This way, Ty," the photographer calls, "Look down, look... yes, like that. Now, jacket over the shoulder. Yes, perfect, perfect. Stay like that. More intensity, yes, perfect. Wonderful!"

He stretches out the vowels in the word and Tyson has to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing. The photographer clicks a few more frames, and turns away to confer with an assistant. Tyson risks a glance beyond the lights to where the rest of his band, still in their photo session wardrobe, are slouched on an uncomfortable red velvet sofa, their snorts of laughter barely audible over the hum of the fan blowing his hair into artful disarray.

"Wooooonderful," he hears Chris mimic, and the photographer frowns when he turns around to find Tyson making a stupid face in their direction rather than smouldering at the camera 'with _intensity_, darling'.

* . * . * . *

On the (rare) occasions that Tyson thinks about the way he looked when he was growing up, he thinks about it in phases. There was the Adorably Gap-Toothed Phase, which had been good for getting quarters out of old folk. There was the Fat Phase, which he hopes never to experience again and which had involved a lot of baggy shirts, and the mercifully brief Unfortunate Acne Period and longer-lived Really Bad Hair Years which he likewise hopes are lost in history. There were also the Months of Cold Ankles, which he'd spent self-consciously tugging his relatively new jeans down to hang lower on his hips to hide the fact that he'd apparently grown two inches overnight and nursing bruises on his elbows and knees. The Badly Dressed Era, which pretty much lasted from the day he was born until about six months after they left Oklahoma, coincided with most of the other phases, even what Tyson likes to call the Hell, Yeah! Period, but which Nick insists on calling his Tyson The Teenage Slut Season.

It's not that Tyson doesn't appreciate the fact that that he grew out of all of those phases, grew into his height and his cheekbones and his chin; it's just that it's hard to believe that the way he looks now, the way people react to his looks now, isn't just another phase that he'll look back on with mingled regret and horror in years to come. He can't help imagining sitting down with Nick and a photo album in fifteen or twenty years, laughing over the Scary Facial Hair Decade, and the I'm A Model, If You Know What I Mean Years.

He's twenty-something now and the changes should be slowing down, but sometimes it still seems like every time he stops long enough to look in the mirror, he's someone new.

* . * . * . *

The interviewer glances down at her watch and then her notepad, smiling tolerantly as Mike and Tyson elbow one another in the ribs and call each other names for a few minutes. "Fucker!" says Mike, finally abandoning the fight, and he grins impartially at the interviewer and Tyson.

"Tyson, does it concern you that some of your younger fans are more interested in your appearance than your music?" the interviewer asks quickly, before another scuffle can break out. Tyson rolls his eyes at her, just a little, and looks away, pretending an interest in the boring hotel art on the wall.

"Me personally," Mike says, after an awkward little pause, "I grew the beard just to stop them mooning over my boyish good looks, you know? I think it's working, don't you?"

* . * . * . *

They both lose weight the first few months in New York, pounds that neither of them, strictly speaking, needed to lose. Tyson almost likes it, the razor sharp curves of his hips, the way his eyes look huge in his narrow face. He'd like it more if he didn't catch Nick looking at him sometimes, his eyes shaded with worry, if Nick didn't sometimes say he wasn't hungry any more, and did Tyson want to finish his sandwich, which Tyson knows damn well is a lie, since he'd seen Nick eat four hamburgers in one sitting before and still have room for dessert.

The first time it happens, he's too stunned to do anything but stare at the guy who's trying to push his business card into Tyson's unresisting hand. "Just the look we're using this year," the guy says, his smile distressingly toothy.

He says he's a model agent, and that he saw Tyson wandering down the street in New York, and really, darling, what _are_ you wearing. Tyson just blinks at him, and says no to a drink, to a cab ride home, to a lunch meeting to discuss his prospects, and he's still laughing when he gets back to where they're staying, almost too hard to tell Nick what's so funny.

He stops laughing when he sees the look on Nick's face when he explains, and Tyson shrugs, and makes a production out of ripping up the card and flinging the pieces over his head. He pretends not to see when Nick picks them up as he leaves the room.

"Do you want to do it?" Nick asks later that night. "You could."

Tyson just stares at him. They're wrapped in blankets on the floor, and for a minute he can't even understand what Nick's asking. "You couldn't do it with me," he says, finally, stupidly, and curses himself when Nick's expression closes up, because he doesn't know, he doesn't care what he has that makes fat little fuckers with big white teeth chase him down the street to offer him modeling contracts, but he knows Nick doesn't have it, whatever it is.

"No," Nick says, though, his voice not changing at all. "But you'd probably make a lot of money, you know?"

It's a really inconvenient moment for Tyson to realize that nineteen isn't really much older than seventeen, and to remember that Nicky didn't even make it a month out on his own, that he'd had to come home to wait for Tyson to finish growing up so they could run away together. It's not a great moment either to notice that maybe Nick has been taking Tyson's mom's instructions to take care of Tyson a little too seriously.

No one asked Tyson to take care of Nick, which really was probably for the best, but he decides now that he doesn't need to be asked. "I'm going to be a rockstar with you," he says, and that's the last time they talk about it.

The next time it happens, Tyson just throws the woman's card into the trash can around the next corner.

* . * . * . *

"We've got an offer for a magazine cover." The PR guy at the label (Tyson refuses to learn their names since they never seem to last more than a month, so he just calls them all Bert, even the women) sounds obnoxiously cheerful, and his voice echoes weirdly over the speakerphone from the table in the lounge of the bus. Tyson zones out while Bert babbles on, naming the surprisingly prestigious magazine and the location of the shoot, the changes it would mean to their schedule, the loss of a precious day off (and that was really the only reason they were being _asked_ at all, rather than told).

Nick raises his eyebrows at the rest of the guys in turn. Mike shrugs and grins. Chris yawns and then nods. Tyson sticks his tongue out and crosses his eyes at Nick when he glances over.

"Fine, whatever, we'll do it," Nick says finally, and Bert stutters to a stop.

"Oh," the PR guy says, suddenly more nervous than cheerful. "It's just for Tyson. They don't want the rest-- I mean, it's just Tyson."

"Nope," says Tyson, leaning in, after a long pause during which Nick carefully doesn't look at him. "Not doing it. Next."

* . * . * . *

Tyson would deny it _strenuously_ if anyone ever asked him, but he thinks they're beautiful, the guys in his band: Mike, with his goofy, ever-present grin, who'll smile at you like you're his best friend fifteen minutes after he swears he hates you forever for stealing his last beer; Chris, with his guileless blue eyes, who would look God himself in the eye and lie with a smile on his lips and not a qualm in his heart; Nick, who he knows better than his own reflection, who can't keep secrets from him because Tyson can read his thoughts in the quirk of his eyebrows and the tilt of his jaw. He's seen them in every possible mood and state of undress way more often than anyone should have to, and he thinks he should be used to it by now, the way they they light up with him on stage, pounding out his song and their beat, but he's never prepared for it. He hopes he never is.


End file.
